by Ann Birch
Despite the tranquillity of the bay, the letter from Sam Shepherd ripples his peace. He pulls it from his frock coat to read again. Its message is short. Marianne, his daughter, and two sons will arrive at Quebec on a sailing vessel sometime in early August. No doubt Marianne was burdensome to his brother-in-law, but surely he could have kept them in London for a few months more. Now White must travel all the way to Quebec and bring them safely to York.
And what is he to do with them when they arrive? He can imagine Marianne’s reaction when she sees the house he is currently building. Eventually it will be a decent dwelling of two storeys made of squared logs and covered in clapboard. But at present he has only three rooms covered in, and they have already cost him more than three hundred pounds. House-building in this backwoods is expensive, even with the prevalent use of unseasoned wood and a total ignorance on the part of his builder of the necessity for a solid foundation of stone.
He has, moreover, not yet received pay for the past six months in His Majesty’s service, though Peter Russell has written to the Treasurer at Whitehall petitioning on his behalf.
Marianne was out of control even in the centre of London society, and he cannot imagine her coping with anything here in this backwater. Everything, except for basic food staples like milk and flour and beef and pork, has to be imported from rich merchants in Montreal and New York, after being shipped to them from England. How is he to feed a family at such prohibitive expense? He does not yet have a permanent cook, merely a slattern who comes in to prepare his meals by the day. He must put up with her wretched cooking and damnable incivility. He cannot fire her. Household servants are nearly impossible to find.
He remembers his chagrin at leaving Yvette LaCroix behind in Niagara. She had not wanted to leave her Indian relatives. But she made him quantities of dandelion wine from the new spring crops in their backyard.
He tried to reciprocate with a gesture he had long thought about. He dug up the small box containing the body of her infant and together they buried it near a clump of birch trees in Paradise Grove at the edge of the commons. There, he hoped, Yvette would be able to visit the gravesite unimpeded by the new owner of his house, a Yankee just arrived from across the river. Then he and Yvette had parted. She had wept as she shook his hand, and he had felt his own tears trickle down his cheeks.
The headache begins again. Time to start home and take some whisky punch. He has already finished drinking Yvette’s dandelion wine. As he passes the Indian fires, he nods to the natives. But now he feels blood trickling down his face, and he fumbles in his waistcoat pocket for a handkerchief. Damn. Nothing. Best to get home and apply Miss Russell’s remedy: cotton soaked in vinegar, stuffed up each nostril. He starts to walk faster.
“You take this, white man,” a voice calls. He turns. A young Indian has risen from his evening meal and beckons to him. The man yanks a handful of lichen off a stone in front of his tepee and hands it to White. White buries his bloody nose in the grey-green wad. It’s a bit scratchy, but quite soft and absorbent, and he feels grateful to the Indian. But it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Here I am, the first Attorney-General of Upper Canada, wiping my face with a moss handkerchief provided by an almost naked native, his skin covered with some malodorous grease to ward off the mosquitoes. I have come to this. I must only be thankful that Marianne is not yet here to see it all.
He heads north away from the bay towards his “park lot” which the Gov had laid out with his surveyors before flying the coop back to England. It’s a huge block of land, and its size keeps him from contact with the John and Betsy Small, owners of the dwelling on the lot beside his. “Berkeley House” is the ridiculous name of this residence.
He has not yet had to face his former paramour. From what he has heard from the never-ending gossip of David Smith, she is trying hard to erase the doubtful reputation she acquired at Niagara.
Smith himself has built an impressive house he calls Maryville. “Being land-rich is not much use if you are cash-poor,” he has said to White. But in the next breath, he always goes on to brag about its startling bright yellow paint and the buildings that make up what he calls his “service court”: “my stable, my coach-house, my wagon shed, my root-house, my summerhouse . . . ”
White passes Peter Russell’s house which faces the bay. The first house Russell purchased in this new capital burned to the ground during the winter, and he had to hire a German immigrant named William Berczy to build this one. It’s quite the place, a U-shaped building in what his friend boasts is “the neo-classical style.” It is surrounded by fine elm trees and a picket fence set upon bricks. It has eleven large shuttered windows, as Russell has mentioned a hundred times, and has cost him a “crushing one thousand pounds.”
He assumes his friend is now in Niagara with his sister, and he hurries past, promising himself to stop the next time when he’s calmer and count the windows to see if there really are eleven. But he has just turned the corner onto Princess Street when he hears a voice calling him. Russell emerges from his fine panelled front door and comes down to the gate. Dammit. I can’t shed the lichen without his seeing it. He tries to hide the bloody “handkerchief” behind his back.
“What’s wrong, White? Your face is a bloody mess.”
“The usual nosebleeds. Nothing to worry about.”
“What’s that you have in your hand, man? Throw away that moss, for God’s sake. Take my handkerchief. We’re all up to our eyebrows in debt in this place, but I can afford a piece of linen.”
“I thought you’d be in Niagara now, getting Miss Russell packed up ready to move over.”
“The inside is not finished, and she’s bound and determined to stay there on the commons until all is ready here. I’m trying to find some servants, got in mind three who’ve come over the border to freedom, and with Job, that should be plenty.” He turns back to look at the house. “She’ll be pleased when she sees it, I warrant. The neo-classic style is the latest craze in Europe, so Berczy tells me, and all those windows let in so much light.”
“Eight windows, are there?” Why am I taunting him in this stupid way?
“Eleven. Have I not told you?”
Let it pass. Change the subject. He spits on the handkerchief Russell has given him and mops at his face. “I trust you will be in Niagara on the seventeenth of this month, my friend?”
“Ah, yes, the date of the formation of the Law Society of Upper Canada. I must commend you, White, on the part you have played in regulating the profession of law in this new country.”
“It is the one most important achievement of my life.” Tears spring unbidden and mix with the bloody mess on his face. He feels Russell’s arm on his shoulder. “I could not have done it, sir, without your support here at our first meeting of the Legislature. You passed the Act that has made it all possible.” Yes, the man annoys me, but he has proven to be a staunch friend. He leans forward and clasps Russell in a close embrace.
“And I shall be with you at Wilson’s Tavern to see it all unfold. What’s more, I shall invite all the gentlemen licensed to practise law on that day to join Eliza and me for a celebration—perhaps the last—at our commodious house on the commons.”
For a moment, as White turns again in the warm summer evening towards his unfinished home, he forgets the impending doom of Marianne and seeks solace in thinking of the greatest accomplishment of his legal career. I have insured that all persons who practise law in this province are competent, follow proper procedures, and behave ethically. From this month forward, there will be no more asses and apes popping up from God-knows-where and calling themselves lawyers. Surely I have, like Mackenzie, achieved a quest to be proud of.
Bring on Marianne. I can stand her. Bring on my children to love and cherish and to walk beside me in the years to come.
Chapter Thirty
July 17, 1797
White and Russell disembark from the Onondaga at the wharf at Niagara. “Shall we hire an ox cart to take us to the hote
l?” White says to his friend.
“With pleasure, as long as you are willing to pay for it.”
They climb up onto the wagon which has been waiting at the pier and jolt off up the road into town. It’s only a mile’s distance, but White is happy to avoid the sweat and dirt which walking would entail.
There’s also the necessity to avoid the louts who linger around the wharf and may find his outfit laughable. Before leaving York in the coolness of early morning, he was happy with his attire, but now he fears he may look slightly ridiculous in the heat of high noon. He’s wearing a black superfine redingote over white vest and breeches. He has not bothered with a hat, but his head is already itchy beneath his wig.
He looks at Russell. His friend has obviously spent no time worrying about his rig. His boots need a shine-up, and White fears his wig may be crawling with lice. He moves as far from him as possible on the plank of the wagon. Perhaps Miss Russell will be able to spruce her brother up when she finally moves to York.
A bone-rattling ride ensues, but fortunately it’s a short one, and they arrive at Wilson’s Tavern to find a crowd of people crammed into the ballroom on the second floor. He has been prepared to find John Small present. As clerk of the Executive Council of Upper Canada, he has perhaps some reason to be here for the investiture. But it’s a shock to see his wife with him as well. She’s deep in conversation with a tall, fair woman whom he has not seen before.
“I did not realize that ladies would be present today,” he says to Russell.
“Nor I, but that bastard Elmsley told me he was bringing his wife, and then Small asked me if he could bring his wife along, too, and what could I say?”
“I did not see the Smalls on the ship.”
“Small told me they would be coming over yesterday to spend the day with the Elmsleys. Apparently Small and Elmsley knew each other in England through Home Secretary Henry Dundas, and Mrs. Elmsley seems to have struck up a friendship with his wife.” Russell points to the two chattering women. “Obviously she knows nothing about that rumpus started by Mrs. Jarvis.”
“Someone will tell her, surely.”
“Perhaps not. Elmsley is such a big cheese in these parts now, and Mrs. Elmsley’s father is a Loyalist whom everyone here reveres. No one wants to alienate the lady by casting aspersion on her friends.”
White looks towards the reading stand which has been set up at the front of the ballroom, a table with two chairs beside it. There are huge portraits of Governor Simcoe and King George the Third on the wall behind, flanking the British flag. “We had better get things started now.”
Russell moves to the podium, and White seats himself behind the table. The Administrator reads aloud the Act passed earlier in the summer by the Parliament of Upper Canada. It is long-winded and couched in arcane language, and the audience shuffles and sighs and the several ladies present fan themselves obtrusively.
White has time to observe the crowd in detail. He is pleased to note that Elmsley, who has placed himself at the front of the audience, presents a clownish figure in a dark-blue redingote over a jacket and breeches of red, white, and blue stripes. Is it supposed to remind us of his illustrious British connections? In contrast, his wife is modestly dressed in a dark-grey gown, her cleavage hidden by a white gauze fichu. Mrs. Small has emulated her friend’s decorum: her gown is white muslin with a long scarf covering the bosom he remembers so well.
At last Russell stops his spiel and calls him forward. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the first Treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada.”
White’s role is to provide a succinct, easy-to-understand summary of the qualifications for the legal profession. It contains sentences he has thought about and honed over many weeks. He has written them down in his best penmanship on a sheet of fine linen paper that will serve as a lasting record of the day. He begins boldly: “The Act, in brief, provides that gentlemen of education and probity shall be privileged to conduct legal procedures for fellow subjects. These gentlemen are authorized as well to secure to the Province and the—”
A cough from somewhere in the audience causes him to look down from the podium. There, near the front of the crowd, he sees the woman Small staring at him, her left eyelid closed in what is clearly a wink. He feels the heat rise into his cheeks, and for a moment, he loses his place on the sheet before him. By the time he resumes, he has lost his audience’s attention as well. They have started to whisper and cough, and it is only Russell’s whack on a gavel from the table beside the reading stand that forces silence again.
Taking a deep breath, White manages to finish his speech, knowing that its impact has totally disappeared. Then the investiture of fifteen men begins, and in another twenty minutes, this ceremony for which he has longed for so many months is over.
Russell pulls him aside and they walk together towards the door leading downstairs to the main entrance. “Bit of stage-fright, my friend? Never mind, we all understand what’s what. The legal profession is now solidly in place, and we can go to my house for a celebratory meal.” He laughs and slaps White on the back. “Eliza has made some syllabub especially for you.”
Chapter Thirty-One
November 1797
In spite of his resolutions to be a better husband in this new world, John White finds it hard to stifle his irritation with Marianne’s views and behaviour. When he first saw her on the wharf at Quebec, he had for a moment felt happy, picturing the joy of having a warm body beside him in bed. Then as he kissed her, he’d become aware of the paint on her cheeks and those damnable artificial eyebrows she always wore in London—made of mouse skin.
And then, he had noticed his children. It was clear at once that Charles and William did not remember him. They clutched each other’s hands and stood by the baggage, not moving an inch towards him. But Ellen had made up for this disappointment. “Papa, Papa,” she cried, throwing her arms around his waist and stretching up to receive his kiss. Ellen alone had sustained him on the long trip up the St. Lawrence and into Lake Ontario.
* * *
Tonight Marianne is harping away on one of her standard topics. He sits in his favourite withdrawing-room chair and tries not to hear her over the pages of his newspaper. But she gets up from her chair, comes over to him, peers over his raised paper and speaks down to him from above. There is no escape. At least, he reflects, she has got rid of the eyebrows and the paint on her cheeks. That much he has accomplished.
“Why can we not have more company, husband? We live next door to the Smalls, but we have yet to invite them to sup with us. Why?”
“Small is not as many rungs up the social ladder as I am, my dear, and in this place, the rungs of the ladder are all-important. And lately he has begun to put on airs which I find intolerable. Why do you not content yourself with our friends the Russells?”
“Mr. Russell is old and fat, and that sister of his, so doleful. I wish to meet people of my age. Mrs. Small is attractive, is she not, and if you worry about the rungs of the social ladder, is she not a bosom friend of Mrs. Elmsley who is right at the top?”
What am I to say? I cannot risk the chance of having the Woman Small anywhere near me. Though she curries favour with the Chief Justice’s wife and appears to be working to restore her reputation, who knows what she might get up to if we meet at an intimate gathering? She is quite capable of talking to me behind her hand or making a cryptic allusion to Niagara days.
“If Miss Russell is ‘doleful,’ as you put it, perhaps you might consider the great loss she has suffered.”
“Oh, she must get over it, move on. I can scarcely refrain from telling her so. But why do you seek to distract me by talking about Eliza Russell? I want to have the Smalls for supper. It’s not natural to ignore close neighbours. I know our house is not as pretty as theirs, but that’s not my fault. I do have a nice walnut teapoy inlaid with mother of pearl, and those flowered cups and saucers with the orange border would make the lady sit up and take notice.”
&nb
sp; “No.” White shakes the pages of his paper, causing Marianne to move back out of range.
“I’m to sit around here, am I, while you go drinking at the garrison? I might just as well have stayed in England with that devil of a nanny your sister and brother-in-law set upon me. Night and day, day and night, she scrutinized my every move, treating me like a seven-year-old. Now I want some society. I will invite the Smalls myself if you do not.”
“You shall do nothing of the kind. If you dare to do such a thing, I will throw you onto the first boat leaving for Lower Canada. You can fend for yourself. But before that day comes, I must ask you to empty the chamberpots. They stink.”
“Why does that slattern you hired not do these loathsome tasks? What am I to do with the slut? She told me this very day she intends to leave soon to marry a German farmer in the place they call Markham. ‘When I marries my man,’ she said to me, I be going into my own house and farm. And damned be to service and the paltry sums I gets from the likes of youse and them other folk from over the lake.’ That’s the way the slut talks to me.”
Well at least I’ve got her off the topic of the Smalls onto another one of her favourites.
He reaches for the decanter again. Oblivion may be what he must seek. But Marianne leaves the room in a huff, so at least he no longer has to listen to her infernal nattering. She goes up the stairs, slams the bedchamber door with a crash, and silence descends, mercifully.